The Breakroom

Darth Vapor and the wonderful weirdness of mercy

A Note from Beth

In November, a flower bloomed in Australia. That sounds unexceptional, but this flower only blooms once every decade or so, and the bloom disappears quickly. The plant itself lives for thirty or forty years, so it only gets a few blooms in a lifetime. When it happens, rarely, it is a marvel. These flowers are weird, and they are wonderful.

Except that they stink. People describe the flower as smelling like a dead possum, a rotting fish, or an old gym shoe. A California botanical garden calls it Darth Vapor.

The corpse flower, technically named Amorphophallus Titanum (click this link to see it; all about that name will make sense to you), emits its ghastly odor to notify pollinators that it's open for business. The anatomy of the flower is fascinating. It's a deep red hue, almost like a hunk of meat screaming "Come and get it!" to flies and beetles, pulling them away from their usual dead-animal-hangouts. Its temperature is about the same as the human body. That heat helps the aroma spread. Pollinators can detect the smell for nearly a mile.

I was thinking about the corpse flower today as I considered the idea of mercy. "Have mercy," said the viral bishop, to President Trump, sure, but more pointedly to all of America. Have mercy.

I want mercy to fall like a gentle rain, to run like water, to smell like spring. I want to know when mercy is happening by how good and right it feels. I want to do mercy and have it be enough, have it be the elixir. But that's not how mercy has worked in my experience.

Mercy surfaces too rarely, and it usually stinks. If you've been with someone when they died, you may have seen incredible mercy at work alongside incredible pain and sorrow and messiness. If you work with or on behalf of anyone society tends to discard, you might witness and do mercy every single day. Yet, you see it because it appears against a backdrop of ugliness. Mercy shows up in hospitals and prison cells and cramped principal's offices. Mercy often has to come in hot and unflinching; there is no alternative. Mercy is usually inexplicable to people who witness it. It is weird, and it is wonderful.

Many of us are thinking about the backdrop of ugliness right now. We might feel like we are suspended in time, waiting long years for the potential of another short-lived bloom. We might feel like we'll only get a few of those blooms in a lifetime. Just today, I had two very lengthy conversations about situations in which a tiny drop of mercy would go miles to alleviate suffering. It seems so obvious to me: where and how to bring the mercy, how much good it would do, how brilliant it would be in a weary world. But the people with power in these situations don't see fit to grant it.

Have mercy.

The corpse flower is endangered, which makes this metaphor hit a little too hard for me. But I take comfort in the fact that its pollination is remarkably efficient. So much life can follow a two-day bloom. It's here, then gone, except that it's not. Darth Vapor and mercy have long tails.

I don't want to forget to see mercy when it appears. I don't want to forget to pollinate and cross-pollinate when the opportunity arises. I want to be a botanical garden going to great lengths to preserve the mercy that exists and to cultivate new mercy. When it's time, I want to be willing to do mercy in the dirt, in the heat, with the stink and the bugs, recognizing that it won't feel like enough but knowing that it is still a marvel.

Have mercy at work. Have mercy with our children. Have mercy with those who need it, everywhere, in all places, whatever their papers, their bank accounts, their living conditions, their struggles. Have mercy with ourselves, and have mercy with each other. Have mercy by seeing the good you're doing in the world every day and resolving to keep it up. Have mercy unceasingly and unfailingly, and know that it matters. It is weird, and it is wonderful, and so are all who do it.

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Sarah and Beth in the Wild:

We loved the chance to talk abour friendship and the value of disagreement in this conversation with the Uncomfy Podcast:

If you’d like Sarah and Beth to come speak or work with your organization through a hard conversation or about the value of disagreement, please reach out to Alise at hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com

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Something Nice to Take You Into the Weekend

Sarah said everyone should see Cory Booker’s face when she told him we read Democracy in America last year, so here you go:

What We’re Reading and Listening To This Week

• Sarah: Empire of Blood: How Dana White's UFC Conquered America (Rolling Stone)

• Beth: There’s a New Language Sheriff in Town (The Atlantic)

• Alise: All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall

• Maggie: The TMJ Handbook by Cator Shachoy (reading for no reason in particular)

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